


Run the Gun and So Much More

by Culumacilinte



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 80's club kids, Clubbing, M/M, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the clubs, Mycroft got to indulge his favourite pastime. He liked to watch, to dip his toes into the pool of humanity and wriggle them about, and see what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run the Gun and So Much More

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is entirely the fault of Mark Gatiss, for tweets about how he rode trains in the 80s in his skinny jeans and eyeliner and long black coats.

‘You were out last night.’  
  
Sherlock, at age twelve, was a weedy thing; a beanpole with hair their mother tried to tame, but which the kid was constantly ruffling and tugging into disarray; too-big hands with their long fingers in constant motion; pale eyes that would have been wide if he wasn’t constantly squinting them in thought. He’d have crow’s feet by the time he was twenty if he kept on like that, Mycroft thought uncharitably. Now, sat at the linen-draped table with a plate of anchovy toast in front of him, he was looking smug and suspicious as ever.  Precisely the thing Mycroft really wanted first thing in the morning.  
  
He tutted. He was in the process of working on his imbuing his tuts with the correct degree of scornful reprimand. ‘What, no good morning for me?’  
  
But Sherlock considered social niceties beneath him, and merely continued looking self-satisfied. Mycroft levelled a suspicious look of his own at his brother, caving after a moment and asking the obvious question.  
  
‘How?’  
  
Unlike Mycroft, who was generally quite content to bask in the knowledge that he was cleverer than the rest of the world, Sherlock had the constant, insatiable need to show off his great brain. Mycroft was used to it, but that didn’t make it any less irritating. He had been out last night, but he’d thought he’d done rather a good job of eliminating any of the evidence that he had; all traces of makeup scrubbed off, fingernails clipped and buffed, a shower with Mummy’s flowery soap to take care of any lingering odour, and he knew for a fact that, in his nice pyjamas, he looked as well-brushed and put-together as ever, without even the slightest crease or bruise beneath his eyes to give away a late night.  
  
The toast smeared with anchovy paste crunched as Sherlock bit into it, and he shrugged.  ‘You figure it out,’ he mumbled around his mouthful, and Mycroft wrinkled his nose distastefully.  
  
‘Chew with your mouth closed, Sherlock, you look like a cow at pasture; you know how Mummy hates that.’  
  
Sherlock, the little rat, just smirked.  
  
~~~~~~~~~  
  
The night before, at seventeen past ten, Mycroft was waiting at the station for the train into London. His breath frosted orange in the artificial glow of the platform lights. The black greatcoat he was swathed in concealed the fact that his clothes were nothing his mother ever would have bought for him, but there was no hiding the hair and makeup. His hair, usually with a distinct wave to it where it was brushed neatly back, was flat-ironed down, the severe fringe falling over his forehead on one side, and his eyes under it dark with mascara and liner. Not too much, he didn’t want to look like a drag queen, but enough for effect. Enough that he looked good, looked the part.  
  
The train doors gave a pneumatic hiss as they opened, and Mycroft took a seat at a window, sitting straight and looking out, ignoring the smell of piss and the gum on the floor. Lights flashed by as visual accompaniment to the rhythmic rumble and thrum of the train, sending striated shadows fleeing across his face.  
  
It wasn’t the music he went for, although that was good enough, and it _certainly_ wasn’t to be seen, which was why most people went to the clubs. They came in droves, togged up in the most outrageous gear they could find, fighting for the privilege of being permitted entrance just so that some wannabe paparazzi might get a snap of them and label them the latest new thing.  
  
Mycroft went for a variety of reasons, the most prosaic of which was a need to _rebel_. He didn’t much care for the word himself; it had all sorts of connotations of disillusioned youth and idiotic but well-meaning rejection of social mores, hippies and punks and people of that sort, but he supposed it was true.  Or, really, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he simply needed an outlet for his frustration, and this was the method he chose.  
  
At home on holiday now, he had Sherlock to contend with; his little brother; annoying, invasive, with far more intelligence than he had any notion of what to do with, and social issues on top. Mycroft was fond of him, he genuinely was, but Sherlock resented him horribly; he didn’t seem to understand that the reason Mycroft got treated like an adult was because he _was_ one, whereas Sherlock was just a child with an over-inflated sense of his own privilege. Still, it made staying at home hellish. Even uni wasn’t much better; it was all so easy it bored Mycroft to tears, and he didn’t have to really work at anything; he had a notion of what he wanted to do with his life, and he knew it was going to be handed to him on a silver platter, when it came down to it.    
  
Little wonder he was frustrated.  
  
At the clubs, he got to indulge his favourite pastime. There was a thing or two to be said for books, and Mycroft enjoyed the intellectual stimulation as much as anybody, but no book was nearly as interesting as people. He liked to watch, to dip his toes into the pool of humanity and wriggle them about, and see what happened. People were predictable, terribly so, if only you knew the right signs to watch for, and the crowds of the clubs let one learn how they reacted to a prod in the right direction. The perfect environment, like a culture in a Petri dish.  
  
Mycroft knew the bouncer-- or, rather, he knew about the bouncer’s particular habit of infidelity, which the man would really rather his girlfriend didn’t—which meant Mycroft got in for free. He thanked him for the favour with a thin smile, and slid in, into the pounding synth and stench of sweat and perfume and hairspray so thick he could taste it. The thick wool coat he handed to one of the cloakroom attendants, exchanging the dramatic sweep of its ankle-length drape for skinny jeans and buckled boots.  
  
He never danced himself; Mycroft didn’t _do_ sweating. Instead, he took up a position in one of the corners, crossed one ankle over the other, and looked out through the crowd.  
  
It didn’t take long for him to find his focus for the night. Maybe sixteen or seventeen, the boy was short, his hair shaggy in a way which was more the result of too long without seeing a pair of scissors than anything intentional. An athlete’s build-- rugby, Mycroft imagined-- and the jacket and shoes he wore were clearly borrowed, supplied by a friend either more fashionable or more wealthy—more fashionable, he decided after a moment, not that the kid himself was poorly off. His first time at this particular club. Bisexual, but repressed; the interest and arousal factors he displayed at a touch or a look read the same for men and women, but the chances of him looking away when the object of his interest was male were exponentially higher. A good old boy, earnest, the set of his shoulders marked him as someone capable of holding his own. Someone, also, who preferred to make his own move in a situation, Mycroft thought; he shied slightly at touches he didn’t initiate-- didn’t recoil entirely, just took a moment to orientate himself.  
  
Mycroft knew just how to approach that.  
  
He propped a shoulder and a hip up against one wall, leaning casually, and tucked his chin down into his neck, watching the boy with lidded eyes. Someone unfamiliar with the environment would be self-aware enough that he’d feel the stare sooner or later.  
  
When he did notice, and turned to look, Mycroft didn’t drop his gaze.  
  
It only took the course of two more songs for the boy to peel off from his friends and over to Mycroft, setting himself in front of him with a combination of natural diffidence and forced aggression. The pugnacious upward tilt of his chin Mycroft credited as a compensatory gesture for his height—153 centimetres, he estimated—and for the faint nervousness that betrayed itself in his eyes and the set of his shoulders.  
  
‘You’ve been watching me.’  
  
The words were thrown out like a duellist with a glove he wasn’t quite sure was fancy enough for the situation. The rest of Mycroft’s expression remained carefully neutral as he widened his eyes in a pastiche of surprise.  
  
‘Have I? Goodness me. But that is rather the point of these sorts of establishments, is it not? One comes here to watch everyone else and ponder whether or not they’re cooler than you are.’  
  
The boy looked somewhat taken aback. Perhaps he’d been expecting an immediate denial, or a leering, bullying comment that he could rile against. ‘I don’t--’  
  
‘But you’ve never been here before, of course.’  
  
‘How do you know that?’  
  
Mycroft treated the kid to a sliver of an amused smile. ‘Patently obvious,’ he assured him over the _thump thump thump_ of bass reverberating around the low-ceilinged room. ‘Your friend’s a regular, is he not? The one you borrowed that jacket from? I expect he dragged you along with promises of all the _hot chicks_ you could pull here.’  
  
Unlike his younger brother, Mycroft was not in the habit of astounding people with information gleaned from the most rudimentary of observations and deductions. It tended to alienate more than amaze, and Mycroft saw far more good in utilising the knowledge he had than exploiting it like a carnie at a circus sideshow. But in this instance, his impulse had been a right one. The boy’s expression narrowed off into something suspicious and curious, but he didn’t move. In fact, he searched Mycroft’s face as if he could find the answer there as to how he could possibly know all that.  
  
‘Yeah,’ he acceded after a moment, grudging fascination beginning to show in his voice. ‘He is. And it’s his jacket. I don’t usually do so much… glitter.’  
  
‘Mm, it is a bit tacky, isn’t it?’  
  
It was the right thing to say. The boy startled into a laugh, the guarded look slipping off his face in favour of genuine amusement. ‘God, it is! I thought I was the only one who’d noticed. All the hair and the--’ He gestured, taking in the gyrating crowd, half of them high and most in outrageous costumes, sequins and leather and taffeta, skirts and heels as likely on men as women. A faintly self-deprecating smile tugged at the side of his mouth. ‘Suppose I’m a bit square for this lot. Does anyone even say square anymore?’  
  
The grin Mycroft offered in response wasn’t even entirely calculated. There was something rather appealing about the boy’s ingenuous charm once he’d let go of his awkward belligerence. ‘I couldn’t say. I’m afraid I’m rather what one might call square myself.’  
  
‘Wouldn’t think it,’ muttered the boy, and there was definitely a note of appreciation in his voice as he glanced from Mycroft’s shiny shoes up to his chest. He seemed to catch himself in the middle of doing so, and cleared his throat. No flush of embarrassment, though, even as Mycroft let his eyes lid slightly, watching with obvious intent. Oh, good. He did choose well.  
  
‘I’m John, by the way.’  
  
An aborted movement of one arm suggested that he was about to pull his hand out of his pocket to offer a shake, before realising that a handshake might be a bit formal for someone he was definitely now flirting with, and John crooked another one of those smiles instead. Mycroft returned it.  
  
‘Mycroft. A pleasure, John. I’ll buy you a drink, shall I?’  
  
He bought John a drink, and was quite charmed by his enthusiastic aggression when Mycroft had coaxed him into the back room and asked, low in his ear, whether John would like to fuck him.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
  
By the time he ran into Sherlock again that afternoon, Mycroft had realised how he knew he went out last night.  
  
‘You went through my laundry, didn’t you?’ _You little creep_ , added his tone of voice. It really had been abominably slow on his part to have not figured it out beforehand; it was so terribly obvious.  
  
Sherlock smirked. ‘Not only did you go out last night _when you weren’t supposed to_ ,’ he recited, ‘you _had sex_ with someone.’  
  
The weight of slight disgust he put on the word _sex_ was of the sort apparently exclusive to prepubescent boys who were aware of the act only as something taboo and a bit naughty that they didn’t like to imagine real people actually engaging in. Mycroft pinned him with a gaze, and Sherlock shifted on his bare feet, satisfaction and faint repulsion warring on his face. He didn’t have to ask.  
  
‘Your clothes- the fabric’s strained in a way which clearly indicates that they were taken off by somebody else. No indentations from nails, so a man. Shorter than you, though, from the angle the weave is pulled at; 5’5 or 5’6. They smell of someone else’s cologne, besides, too much for it to be the result of just residue in the air. Not expensive, but nice. Respectable.  Not the sort of stuff most people’d wear to the kind of place I’m sure you were at, so… new kid? Corrupting the youth? God, Mycroft, you’re disgusting.’  
  
He jerked his chin up at his elder brother, daring him to contradict him. Mycroft’s lips twisted for a moment, and he crossed his arms casually over his chest. ‘You are, of course, quite right, Sherlock.’  
  
‘Ha!’  
  
‘ _But_ ,’ he cut him off sternly before he could get into any kind of gloating, ‘where I go and whom I do what I do with is absolutely none of your business.  I know you’re bitter, baby brother, but do find a more constructive way to deal with it.’  
  
Sherlock could stay standing there in the middle of the corridor for all Mycroft cared, as he strolled off. He didn’t, in fact; the sound of quiet footsteps started up after 13.7 seconds.  Probably off to tell Mummy, not that she’d care. If anything, she’d be pleased that one of her sons was having something resembling a normal social life.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
‘You had sex with my brother.’

Sherlock, at age 34, was no longer weedy. He did, however, resemble in certain aspects the corpses he experimented on, so it's not to say that was necessarily a good thing. His hair, however, had grown into its mussed curliness, and the eyes had ceased to be wide, and settled into an angular paleness-- much like the rest of him. Now, slumped on the couch with _The Ecology of Saprotrophic Basidiomycetes_ in his lap, he looked utterly bored.

John stared at him. ‘I—sorry?  I’m… fairly sure I’d know it if I’d slept with your brother.’

‘I didn’t say slept,’ Sherlock corrected idly, eyes still on his book, ‘Slept implies a bed. I said you had sex with my brother. On… the fourth of January, 1985. In a club called Billy’s, I believe.’  
  
John had just enough self control to keep his staring from graduating into anything more undignified.  
  
‘Don’t you recall?’ He sounded mildly peeved now, and he glanced up briefly from his book to focus on John. ‘He would have been wearing very tight grey jeans, patent leather boots, heeled and buckled, probably a--’  
  
‘No, no, I, um, I remember.’ He looked rather disturbed by the fact that he did, and he eyed Sherlock warily. ‘How…?’ Sherlock’s feats of nigh-magical deduction were ordinarily something that left John in awe; he enjoyed watching Sherlock’s brain work, and getting the explanation later, but that wasn’t to say that his abilities weren’t often disconcerting.  
  
Sherlock had gone back to his book, and one of the lambskin-thin pages crinkled as he turned it. ‘Really, John. People are _obsessed_ with sex, it’s one of the easiest things to read in them; it was hardly any great test of my abilities.’  
  
‘But I was sixteen!’  
  
‘And?’  
  
John couldn’t quite find words to express why this was as strange as it was, so he fell silent, shaking his head.  
                                                             
‘I don’t mind,’ Sherlock said after a pause.  
  
‘Mind,’ repeated John faintly. ‘That wasn’t actually— you know what, never mind.’ He had no desire to get into a discussion with Sherlock about the fact that really, one’s personal life ought to remain _personal_ , especially when it’s one’s personal life from twenty-some years ago. Never mind the fact that it really wasn’t Sherlock’s place to mind anyway.  
  
A few more pages containing crinkled past before John turned once again to Sherlock, apprehension on his face. ‘Does he know? Mycroft?’  
  
‘Naturally.’  
  
John sighed. And then jumped, as Sherlock snapped the tome shut with a crack like gunfire, rocketing out of the chair as if he’d been stung.  
  
‘ _Physarum polycephalum. Physarum polycephalum_ , of course, how could I have been so _stupid_?’ His hands came up momentarily to clutch at his hair before he paced off to fetch his coat, still berating himself as he did. ‘I was looking for fungi you might find in the city-- mould stains on the ceiling, spores growing in the damp in basements-- but if it’s a slime mould… he’s been out in the country. Recently. Oh, that changes everything.  Come on, John, not a moment!’  
  
He was already out the door, his last words resounding in the stairwell without waiting for John to follow.  
  
With a faintly bemused laugh, he levered himself up out of his chair, snatched his own jacket off the hook, and tramped down the stairs after Sherlock. The fascinating variety of local fungi seemed to have distracted Sherlock for the moment from that frankly worrying topic of conversation; John could only hope he didn’t see fit to bring it up again.  
  
Not to mention, what the hell was John himself supposed to do, the next time he saw the elder Holmes brother? Nothing, he supposed; it had been twenty years ago, after all.  Never mind the vaguely disturbing tickle of memory when he recalled the face of that boy in the club and realised that it was Mycroft. For now, he’d just have to follow Sherlock’s example; slime moulds were the order of the day.


End file.
